The Smashing Pumpkins -- Night #1 at the Wang Theater Boston (11/15/2008)

I expected to be writing a favorable and perhaps glowing review of the first of two Smashing Pumpkins shows, but there's just no way I can write something like that right now.

Sure, they played Tonight, Tonight, but that song is hardly able to hold my opinion high after last night's end of show antics.

I have a major problem with any artist who feels entitled to throw their fame back in your face. Like most, I understand that being a well-known figure changes the structure of your personal and professional life -- getting a cup of coffee is no longer a small blip on the radar screen. Some of your professional aspirations are instead molded by the engine driving dollar generation and not by what you want to do.

That being said, some end up so famous or so successful that they yield great power. Instead of being told what to do, they unabashedly dictate their path while making friends and enemies. Some handle this power very well, others do not, and yet a third group seems to mock that power despite pragmatism.

Billy Corgan is a member of that last group.

To anyone who actually paid to see the Pumpkins last night, you were ripped off.

Whatever your level of fame is, you owe it to paying fans not to be a rogue individual on stage. When you are Billy Corgan, you owe it to the fans to spit in their faces after they've eagerly watched you for 2 straight hours. We know that you don't want to play all of the old songs that made you famous, but we also tend to agree that your new music simply isn't the same.

I was in shock as I watched the Smashing Pumpkins mock the crowd by playing kazoos at the end of the show. Corgan made two comments that seemed to ignite a wildfire in the crowd:

-- "...20 years of pissing people off..."

-- "Yes folks, we're absolutely hear to play exactly what you want to hear"

A 20-year celebratory show should be the kind of performance that honors the old material. After all, we think that it was some of best rock music to come out of the 1990's. If the goal was to whine about fans paying to hear old material then the show should not have taken place. If instead, the goal was to play a wide range of material and dazzle the crowd with a late encore, the show absolutely should have happened.

Unfortunately, for us Pumpkins fans, we got a mockery last night.

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